


rivers and deserts (i cry then i'm better)

by sevdrag (seventhe)



Series: if i were with you (i could say amen) [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Agnes Nutter's Prophecies, Angst, Angsty Crowley (Good Omens), Brandy - Freeform, Hurt Aziraphale (Good Omens), M/M, Post-Almost Apocalypse (Good Omens), Protective Aziraphale (Good Omens), Quote: You can stay at my place (Good Omens), The Night At Crowley's Flat (Good Omens), i have an (1) feeling, like crowley i express trauma by not looking at it directly, many glasses of wine were harmed in the making of this fic, my cats all say hello
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-05
Updated: 2019-12-05
Packaged: 2021-02-26 06:01:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21678673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhe/pseuds/sevdrag
Summary: Aziraphale says, “Look, darling, we’re an angel and a demon. We have a delightful spread of occult and ethereal powers at our disposal. Surely we’ll be able to think of something?”This is meant to be uplifting. This is meant to get Crowley thinking, to set his lovely imagination in line with the centuries of knowledge Aziraphale can recall, to focus Crowley at the time Aziraphale needs him the most.They can both be mortar and pestle; both be fulcrum and lever, as it suits them. There really isn’t that much difference between the two of them, anymore.Instead Crowley recoils, and hisses, “Why must you alwayssssay that?”[you can stay at my place, if you like] [part 1 of 3] [a triptych of that night]
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: if i were with you (i could say amen) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1562800
Comments: 44
Kudos: 230





	rivers and deserts (i cry then i'm better)

**Author's Note:**

> [title from _human, being_ by caitlyn scarlett](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4LlbqTGz9E)
> 
> _How many reasons do you need?_  
>  _To get to the garden, let the light in_
> 
> _Rivers and deserts (I cry then I’m better)_  
>  _Rivers and deserts (I cry then I’m better)_  
>  _How many reasons do you need_  
>  _How many seasons have you seen_  
>  _And what the hell you breathing_
> 
> _Everything then nothing_  
>  _I'm empty then I'm stuffed_  
>  _It's all the same_
> 
> _Sometimes I wish the pain would stay_  
>  _And make me live for love_  
>  _It's lonely being enough for myself_

———

As they get onto the bus, Aziraphale is aware of a sensation he has little reference for. It’s something like — vertigo, really, which he’s also never felt, but it’s hooked deeper into his head than he feels is usual. It’s like vertigo and nausea got together to create some sort of offspring that feels like a free-fall through space, where there’s no gravity, and where the stars have been created by angels who are angels, and angels who are demons, which is: it’s a mind-boggling concept, more boggling than even the sense of spinning and the loss of balance.

He collapses into the seat next to Crowley with very little grace. Aziraphale likes to think he’s learnt to move like a proper human, but despite what just happened at the Tadfield Air Base, Aziraphale is far away from human at the moment: his angelic essence feels like it’s pouring out his ears, or wrapping round his spine to spin him, the true initiation point of this dizzy feeling like everything has changed and the ground isn’t the same place it used to be.

But it doesn’t feel _bad,_ say: this is a gravity-free zone, the blazing arc of a burning comet through space, and all Aziraphale feels is this sort of wild glee. It’s vertigo at apogee. It’s a hastening slope. It’s a catalyst and an initiator.

Crowley glances over at him, but Aziraphale just nods, because he’s trying to sort all of his new innards and pieces into something resembling order: something that knows where the gravitational center of the Earth is, after all.

That’s his new center, he knows. There’s no pull from Heaven that can outweigh what they’ve done tonight.

He shimmies a bit back until he’s as comfortable as he can be in his seat, and starts trying to reassemble the structures inside him, vertebrae by vertebrae.

———

“Why did you say it?” Crowley says, somewhere near fifteen minutes into their trip.

Aziraphale has managed to shift everything southwards and northwards enough that he no longer feels like he’s in freefall; it won’t last, but he knows what they have ahead of them, he knows they’ve taken the necessary steps to cancel a War To End Wars and have invited a more personal war onto their own heads. His new alignment doesn’t have to be perfect: this is one of the things Aziraphale has learnt from the humans. It just has to last long enough. Tolerance intervals are set by the situation. Close enough is perfect.

“I haven’t said anything in nigh on half an hour, dear,” Aziraphale replies, because he’s fairly sure he hasn’t. “Or, at least I’m not aware of it.”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Crowley says. His thigh is pushed up against Aziraphale’s because bus seating is _terrible,_ but the rest of Crowley is leaning up against the window, a slunk shoulder and a tipped head. With the sunglasses and the angle, Aziraphale really can’t tell where Crowley is looking. “What you said. On the bench.”

“Which part, darling?” Aziraphale thinks back. He thinks they’d had a fairly tame discussion, all things considered. “About the sword?”

“No,” Crowley hisses, and Aziraphale feels all of his newly-aligned vertebrae stack and shiver down his back: this is the sort of thing Crowley gets truly angered with, based on the tone of his voice; and while previously they might have had a good old human fight and sulked about it for a while, they don’t — they don’t have that luxury now. They can’t afford to be mad at each other now, not for years, not even for days.

“I sssaid,” Crowley emphasizes in that way that makes him sound like he’s all fangs and teeth and nothing human in his jaw; it tells Aziraphale that Crowley’s really upset about something, and he feels all of these newly-straightened bits inside him shake, as if his center’s off after all.

“I said,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale feels this overwhelming sense of _reeling in_ from Crowley, as if he’s physically pulling back all the tendons of feeling he occasionally lets escape. Aziraphale isn’t sure he’s ever met anyone as controlled as Crowley. “I said, you can stay at my place, and you said.” There’s a pause here where Aziraphale is fairly sure neither of them are breathing. “You said, _my side won’t like that._ Why did you say that?”

“Oh, Crowley, dear,” Aziraphale starts, instantly on the soothing portion of this routine that he knows very well. “I mean, they wouldn’t, would they? It’s habit at this point, love. You absolutely they wouldn’t.”

“Hng,” says Crowley. He has this way of making unintelligible noises sound as if they’re fully fleshed-out sentences that Aziraphale might be able to hear if only he were a demon like Crowley; but Crowley shifts a bit, a slight tightening of all his lanky angles that means he’s mostly focused out the window rather than on Aziraphale.

This means Aziraphale might have had the rest of the bus ride to put this particular Crowley-sound into the translator he’s built up over six-thousand years to see what else it might mean, except that most of his angelic librarian brain is occupied with the Final Prophecy of Agnes Nutter, Witch, and as all-powerful as he is some things have to take precedence. And Aziraphale, honestly, would rather they survived whatever’s coming for them. He has a priority now, and that priority is himself and Crowley seated at the Ritz, not in hiding but in public, as real guests. Like real people do.

———

Crowley leads Aziraphale off the bus and flicks his fingers at it as it pulls away, ensuring it’ll get back to London the way it needs and no one involved in its sizeable detour will be affected for more than an hour or so. He’s trying to — he’s a seething, breathing, pulsing mess of _blessed human feelings_ and Crowley _hates_ every last one of them, as he’s _hated_ them over the six thousand or so years he and Aziraphale have been on the Earth, watching over Her humans.

(At this point Crowley knows he lives in a state of denial - that these feelings are his, not just some human chemical reaction - but he also knows that their time is short and they have to figure out a way that Aziraphale can survive whatever Heaven’s going to throw at him as punishment in the next few days. Crowley, like many demons, is absolutely fantastic at repression, but sometimes it comes through to save his ass.)

He has been like this since that phrase left Aziraphale’s mouth on the bench and he’d felt what seemed to be the last of his hope and yearning, the final pieces of a strength he shouldn’t have had, all of it crumbling down even though he’d never even allowed it to build above ground floor. Crowley keeps very specific building permits and zoning throughout his imagination, and anything that - anything that had to do with Aziraphale - anything with the angel was, was, it was just tied down, it wasn’t supposed to do anything except maybe sit in a file cabinet and then, one day, explode and die. Except that a tiny hope had, impossibly, built itself up in those final moments of what would have been Armageddon, the smallest tower of Bab-Il, with Aziraphale at his side — and it was even worse to have this one crash, Crowley thinks, than to have never had hope at all. Sometimes a deep pinprick hurts worse than a broad scrape or, say, a boiling pool of sulfur. Crowley should know; he’s had them all.

Crowley knows they’re proper fucked. He knows what’s coming is going to be unlike any reckoning he or Aziraphale has ever even considered. And he’s determined — Crowley is single-celled on this issue, every atom of his body dedicated to the sole purpose of making sure the angel survives whatever nuclear Armageddon is coming.

He isn’t supposed to feel this way. He knows. But Aziraphale is writ into Crowley’s bones now, his name in every language of the world spelt up Crowley’s femur, through his ribcage, along every centime of his skull. It’s Crowley’s fault because in spite of this, in spite of every version of Aziraphale’s name existing somewhere on his skin, he’d still risked the angel to save the angel. And humanity, and the Earth, his second and third all-encompassing loves, and that didn’t make them minor by any means, but. He’d invoked the angel writ on his very nerve stem like a spellbook, and endangered the thing he’d meant to save above all.

Which meant this was all his fault. Aziraphale had shifted, for a moment. He’d shown himself. He’d made a public declaration, standing there with Adam, nearly holding hands with Crowley — albeit through the body of the Antichrist. And Crowley had been — he’d been a fool, really, to take it at its word and think, no, this was it, this was the Principality Aziraphale shifting his axis, finding a new true north. Finally, after all this time, aligning in the same direction as Crowley himself. All rivers converging at the low point, indeed.

It had been a confusing time.

Because what Crowley knows now is that Aziraphale hasn’t yet given up the chance that he can return. _I don’t think my side would like that very much,_ he’d said to Crowley on the bench, and Crowley had really tried to be gentle with him rather than lash out with all of the hurt those words had caused: because Aziraphale deserved this, after following Crowley down an eleven-year path that had turned out to be absolutely wrong; because Crowley had talked him into this, into all of this; because Crowley at his core is no better than the tempter’s tongue, while Aziraphale is whole and holy and beautiful and all of the things Crowley had rejected once upon an ancient time.

At this point he’s led the angel up and into his flat entirely by instinct - clever, smart human bodies with their habits and their instincts and their automatic gestures - and Aziraphale was looking at him across his own kitchen island, and Crowley realizes he’d never seen Aziraphale’s eyes so wide.

“Wine, angel?” He croaks out, and swallows against the storm.

———

Aziraphale has been pushed, prodded, eyeballed, teased, mocked, handed a glass of absolutely fantastic Chianti - deep on the back of the tongue - and settled not on Crowley’s intimidating couch but on the wrinkled leather thing he kept tucked away in a back corner where it wasn’t visible because he knew Aziraphale preferred it, and has also been presented with a platter of olives and meats and cheeses and fresh tomatoes and balsamic and crackers and oh, overall it had been absolutely scrumptious, and absolutely satisfying. It’s so much of what he loves about humanity, and he can feel his spirit rebuilding, atom by atom.

The Chianti has been kindly refilling itself for the last two hours, and Aziraphale’s in that place where he’s pleasantly rolling along his own mental landscape but not really deliberating a sudden sprint anywhere. The wine feels as if it’s dropping a long, long way down into his stomach, as if all his internal organs have in fact rearranged themselves with the loss of his original True North. This is a distracting feeling, and so he figures it’s time to turn both of their prodigal minds upon the last prediction from Agnes Nutter.

“Alright, my dearest,” he says, turning and rolling until he’s turned to face Crowley at the other end of the leather couch. “It’s time for us to decipher Agnes Nutter’s final prophecy.”

Crowley’s eyes narrow. Aziraphale had plucked his sunglasses off his face hours ago, because he loves being able to see the full range of emotions passing through Crowley’s snake-eyes. He’s always been fond of Crowley’s eyes, having seen them in Eden as an individual feature to be noted, like Eve’s smile or Adam’s arms, rather than the demonic calling card he knows Crowley believes them to be. They’re the color of honey, Aziraphale thinks, or golden coin. It’s quite endearing.

“ _Choose your faces wisely,_ ” Aziraphale intones. He likes to think he’s giving it the right intonation, but to be fair, he’s mostly bollocks at any American style of accent. Honestly, he doesn’t think it odd that the city he and Crowley had chosen as their own reflected their plain style of speech, but that doesn’t mean he finds it easy to blend in at every single corner of the world.

(Aziraphale can remember the day he and Crowley chose London, absolutely drunk on the Queen’s brandy, and strategizing the entire way; “I’ll them I’m settling there because _you_ are,” Crowley had pronounced, “and _you_ tell Heaven the same, and they’ll probably give us both a commendation for being so dedicated to the work.” He’d been right on both counts, because Aziraphale had secured some prime real estate for a bookshop, and had received Heaven’s complimentary administrative note mere weeks after Crowley had his from Hell. They’d celebrated with the last bottle of that brandy and an unlimited source of champagne that had been Crowley’s treat.)

Crowley makes a face. “That’s awful, angel,” he says with the right amount of venom, but Aziraphale suddenly reads it like a performance rather than a genuine response and that makes him nervous. He needs Crowley here, right here, beside him, not torn off into some web of upset Aziraphale isn’t aware yet. Is he hurt? Is there something else going on?

“Crowley,” Aziraphale starts, his voice that chiding tone he uses when he wants to calm Crowley down, when he’s trying to draw Crowley back to some familiar boundaries; he knows how Crowley‘s head wanders, that incredibly creative, imaginative brain of his reaching states Aziraphale can’t even guess at. Sometimes his Crowley needs to be pulled back into a set of dimensions they can both deal with.

“Don’t,” Crowley hisses, somehow extending the last syllable into a snake-noise; he stands up, angles jutting everywhere, and sets his wine glass down on the table in order to pull both hands through his copper-red hair. “Angel, jussst.” Crowley swallows, and it’s audible throughout his entire apartment. “Just don’t.”

“Crowley, darling,” Aziraphale repeats. He’s now thoroughly thrown, and reminded of that accelerated vertigo feeling from before; “Please tell me what’s wrong, because I’m worried about you now.”

And Crowley rears back, an incredibly snake-like gesture, as if drawing up a hood behind him to pull Aziraphale’s eyes away from the teeth at the center of the issue; “What do you think issss….” Aziraphale watches as Crowley pulls back, shaking his head, almost a visible jerk. “Wrong?”

“I don’t _know,_ ” Aziraphale says plaintively. “I don’t know, and I want to, because I don’t think we’re going to be able to solve this without the other, and it’s just you and I now, dear.” It’s an admission too close to some other truths but Aziraphale wonders if Crowley needs that — if Crowley needs to hear something that sounds like some sort of hope.

The problem is: the problem is that there are few things Aziraphale hasn’t told Crowley over the years, but those few things he’s never said are key and they are deep and they are blinding, things Aziraphale fears could scar the life out of his own heart; things Aziraphale keeps safe buried beneath his love for Her, where they’ll appear as background radiation, rather than the lighthouse beacon he feels they could be. Things he thought were evil, then things he _should_ think were evil, then things he was slowly accepting as not just _not evil,_ not just _normal,_ but _holy,_ the _holiest,_ the biggest and greatest gift an Angel might ever give — but no. He cannot think of that. Not now. Unraveling the tangled briars he’s set around it will take too long, and he and Crowley will be captured.

Instead he says, “Look, darling, we’re an angel and a demon. We have a delightful spread of occult and ethereal powers at our disposal. Surely we’ll be able to think of something?”

This is meant to be uplifting. This is meant to get Crowley thinking, to set his lovely imagination in line with the centuries of knowledge Aziraphale can recall, to focus Crowley at the time Aziraphale needs him the most.They can both be mortar and pestle; both be fulcrum and lever, as it suits them. There really isn’t that much difference between the two of them, anymore.

Instead Crowley recoils, and hisses, “Why must you alwaysss _say that?_ ”

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale says, shocked but most of all worried beyond his normal performance of politeness. “What in heaven’s name are you going on about?”

Crowley glances down at him - golden eyes wide, snake-pupil slits thinned out to the point they barely exist, just a slightly darker inflection in the middle of those amber pupils - then away, and makes some kind of jerky aborted movement Aziraphale can’t decipher at all.

“You may as well say it,” Aziraphale says, rather nastily, “since we obviously won’t be brainstorming _how to save our lives_ until this has passed.”

Crowley _reels_ around to look at him. Now his pupils are broad, nearly wide, his eyes dark with some kind of emotional upheaval Aziraphale isn’t sure he’s ever seen before. Crowley is _normally_ so reserved, so self-sure, so absolutely deliberately precisely what he wants to be that this partial unraveling of the suave, slick mask he normally wears is — honestly, it’s more upsetting to Aziraphale than the appearance of Lucifer earlier today. That, at least, he’d been expecting.

This glimpse of Crowley - wide eyes, that set to his jaw, absolutely stunning in all of his unexpected _hurt_ \- Aziraphale was definitely not expecting. And it hurts.

“I’m sorry, love,” he says hastily, and Crowley jerks at it, another one of those odd snake-like movements he makes with no regards to normal human bone structure. “It’s just — you said,” Aziraphale continues, “Hastur knows where you are now. _Hell_ knows where you are. And every second we sit here I’m afraid they’re getting closer.” He swallows. “I suppose having me here will possibly give you enough time to get away. I can certainly call up the good old _smiting,_ I just haven’t used it in, eh, well…” His voice trails off. Crowley is looking at Aziraphale as if he’s grown three heads and a number of wings. Subtly, Aziraphale makes sure he hasn’t. It certainly has been a rough day.

“No,” Crowley says and it comes out choked, rough, raw, as if Crowley’s got something stuck in his throat he can’t speak past. “No, angel, that isn’t how it’s going to work.”

“Well, then, talk to me,” Aziraphale snaps, although it comes out far more whiny than he had originally intended. “I’ve _no_ idea what you’re thinking, and even _less_ idea what you’re feeling right now, and I’d rather we both save our existential _freak-outs_ for a more appropriate time!”

Crowley freezes. His eyes are fixed on Aziraphale. His pupils have returned to their normal size but his sclera have bled out golden, something that only happens when Crowley loses control. And Crowley _never_ loses control; Aziraphale’s seen him laughing, crying, screaming, fourteen sheets to the wind drunk, sleeping, waking, in fits of demonic fury and in a calmness so benign it could almost be angelic, and he’s _never_ seen Crowley’s eyes go full golden, not since the days of Eden. Not since Crowley figured out that it made him too different to go unremarked.

“Angel,” Crowley says in the most serious voice he has. “Aziraphale.” It still sounds like he’s choking his words out around a mouthful of wine, or a bite of something. None of this is Crowley’s usual behavior and it’s throwing Aziraphale, so much more than he’d expected; he’s _just_ rearranged all the lines of his soul to not point directly at Heaven as they have been: how is he expected to get his feet underneath him if _Crowley,_ his one constant over six millenia, won’t stand still?

Aziraphale looks up at Crowley and something _breaks_ in his heart, one of those long dark strands of something he won’t even acknowledge in the daylight because he’s too afraid — and he says, his own voice choking, “Crowley?”

Crowley’s still giving him that long, shuttered look, as if his eyes are locked onto Aziraphale’s face; then his eyes shudder closed, slowly, and something like a wince passes over Crowley’s cheeks in the way they wrinkle up and relax unsatisfied.

“Angel,” Crowley says, and his voice is deep and resigned. “Look. I need a minute. It’s been a day. Have some wine. Help yourself. _Mi casa,_ and so on, I just need to.” And Crowley ducks behind a corner.

Aziraphale drinks his wine and concentrates on his breathing. He isn’t sure _what’s_ going to happen now.

———

Crowley rounds the corner, flees into his bedroom, slams the door shut, and lets his wobbly knees buckle as he slides down to the ground against the door, one hand in his hair and the other covering his face as he breathes in, deeply, against it, like it’s the paper bag he can breathe into to save his life.

_He can’t._

He lets his head thunk back against the door and keeps breathing, even though he technically doesn’t need to, because this body’s full of goddamn _emotions_ and _panic chemicals_ and whatever the _fuck_ is going on in the space under his breastbone where his heart is supposed to be _working_ rather than _pulsing with bright, indecipherable pain_ , whatever the fuck _that_ is, it all needs to stop it the fuck right now.

Crowley’s upset and he knows he’s exhausted and he also knows he’s fraying at the edges, like a sweater tumbled too many times through the dryer, and he fucking _looked at Satan today and said no,_ and he froze time again, and that would almost be manageable but on top of that, _the cherry on this fucking sundae,_ is that Aziraphale still thinks he can somehow save Crowley and get back into Heaven’s good graces, and that just means that Crowley is alone, alone, _alone._

“Fuck!” Crowley yells, trusting the walls of his bedroom to keep it from Aziraphale’s ears. Both his hands are in his hair now, tugging his head back into the door as if pain’s going to help; and he breathes through teeth he knows are more snake than human because he _has_ to get this under control, he has to _focus,_ because Aziraphale’s right that they’re losing time and they need to make a plan.

Because if legions of Hell show up at the door to his flat and Aziraphale falls defending himself, Crowley will literally walk into the next church he finds and fall backwards into their holy water with no regrets. He will _not_ allow that to happen. Not after _everything_ that they’ve done.

It’s _his_ job to save his angel, as it always has been, and he’ll literally destroy himself taking down anything Hell can send him if it gets Aziraphale out of here. Crowley has never feared the obliteration of his own life; it’s an empty existence that frightens him the most.

Which means he has to take control and head out to be able to plot and plan with Aziraphale, to be able to figure out what steps they can take to protect themselves, and — Crowley can’t desperately hope, not anymore, for Aziraphale’s affections, but he can at least hope for a world where Aziraphale continues existing and loving mankind, and _maybe,_ maybe, if lots of things are forgiving enough and nothing realizes that he’s still around, maybe Crowley can exist in his shadow, basking in the rays of Aziraphale’s sun.

———

Aziraphale’s emptied the charcuterie plate and has been deliberating about approaching Crowley’s fridge for more - certainly, if he expected it, there would be more in there; but he feels specifically awkward at a time like this - for a few long minutes before Crowley emerges. His golden eyes look normal, and clear. His posture is, if not normal, understandably exhausted, rather than absolutely thrown, and his face has relaxed enough to look like Crowley under normal stress rather than a Crowley thrown barren and blindfolded into some lion’s den. Aziraphale isn’t at all fooled that it’s all suddenly become acceptably okay, but he can at least appreciate Crowley’s focus on their current problem.

“Right then,” Aziraphale says, keeping his voice calm but firmly determined to move past this point. “I’ve had an idea.”

“Alright, angel,” Crowley drawls, and it’s close enough to his normal intonation that Aziraphale, once again, lets it pass. Crowley sits back down next to him on the leather settee and motions with one finger until his glass is full again. “Let’s hear it.”

“I assume you and I both have been at this prophecy the entirety of the bus ride and then some,” Aziraphale pronounces, proud of his deduction. “So instead, let’s move from the other direction, as awkward as it might be. What, er, well, what do you expect Hell will have, um. Prepared? For you?”

Crowley gives him a wide, slow grin; it’s a workable imitation of the one he usually uses, and Aziraphale very politely lets it slide. “Oh, with me, they’ll spare nothing,” Crowley says with his usual dramatic pronunciation. “Like for like. It’ll be holy water and that’s it.”

“Right,” Aziraphale says automatically, thinking of years past, and then — and then Crowley’s words catch up to him. “Like for like? What on earth do you mean?”

Crowley’s grin quirks and definitely goes too sour to ignore. “May not have mentioned. Burnt out a Duke of Hell with it when they came for me. Old ‘insurance’ saved my life, so.” And Crowley raises his glass of wine.

“Sure,” Aziraphale says, in a daze. “What?”

Crowley grins and it’s fierce and ferocious and only a _little bit_ fake. “Ha! Hastur and Ligur, figured out it was me somehow, bollocksed up the old Antichrist. Came looking for me. Holy water took out Ligur and I managed to outsmart Hastur long enough to trap him in the tape.” An elbow gestures towards the office, where Aziraphale knows the ansaphone is. “Saved my life.” His grin turns crooked for a second. “Came to find you just afters.”

Aziraphale’s brain is doing the mile-a-minute rewind, and he feels a bit, well, scrambled. “That’s what you wanted as insurance, all along?” He says, but it feels like he’s still overlooking the major piece. “Hell _came for you_ and you were left with, what, a thermos of holy water and a _cassette tape?_ ”

Crowley’s grin goes wider. “What did you _think_ I wanted it for, angel? Melted him right as rain, which gave me enough leeway with Hastur that I managed to give him a full phone-line turnaround before he knew what he was even seeing.” Crowley looks so proud and Aziraphale hates that he has to interrupt it - again; his second interruption of the evening - but he has to ask.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Crowley’s grin becomes a pensive frown. “What on earth did you think I meant when I came for you at the bookshop, angel? I told you Hell had realized it was me, and we had to get out, and—” It’s like they both realize this is a dangerous line of conversation at the same time, but Crowley looks less happy about it. “You daft bint, did you think they’d sent me a _strongly worded note?”_

Aziraphale frowns, now. “You’re overly suspicious, Crowley, I assumed it had meant…” He doesn’t know how to finish that, so unfortunately, Crowley does it for him.

“So you made the same assumption that you’ve been doing ever since I asked you for holy water, and assumed I was making things up! Being dramatic!” His hands are in his hair again and the grip looks almost as desperate. “Because _up until now,_ you weren’t ever able to conceive of a _side_ that would go against one of its own agents to that extent, right? Because you’re _still_ on Heaven’s good side, right?”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale all but howls, absolutely offended. “You _know_ I thought you meant to _off yourself,_ right?”

“Angel,” Crowley says, and it’s like the bottom has dropped out of Crowley’s flat; like the ceiling has shifted, like the room’s turned ninety degrees on an axis and Aziraphale, again, doesn’t know where he is. “Angel, I’ve literally been telling you this from the beginning. It’s _insurance._ In case everything went pear-shaped - oh, don’t interrupt again - I wanted to give myself enough time to get out.” His frown goes deeper but also somehow more genuine. “You must know I’m the most absolutely selfish demon there is, in Hell’s terms anyway,” and it’s a tiny trace more gently, and Aziraphale clings to that. “You think my most fundamental response would be to drown myself in a holy water bucket? You think too much of me.”

“It isn’t,” Aziraphale begins, but his head is still full of balloons and clouds, and again Crowley reads something into him that he didn’t want seen.

“Oh,” Crowley begins, and now there’s a snap to it, a completely demonic edge. It cuts so clean and that’s what makes Aziraphale realize that it’s been a long time since Crowley’s used it with the sharp edge out — and that’s coalescing a thought in his backbrain that he has no attention left to dedicate to it; “oh,” Crowley hisses, “it’ssss because that’sss what _you_ would do, isssn’t it, preciousss angel, you’d ssset your head on the guillotine block the entire way, proclaiming loudly that there ssshould have been a better way.”

“ _Christ Almighty,_ Crowley,” Aziraphale declares, and it’s enough to set Crowley aback somewhat, such that Aziraphale can spend a few precious seconds in _shock:_ because Crowley was in danger, because Crowley had needed holy water for a number of reasons; because Crowley had been directly attacked by Hell and hadn’t specifically spelled it out, but — most of all because Aziraphale had been wrong, thinking all of Crowley’s cleverness and all of his fears had been an exaggeration, some dramatic license taken when, in fact, Crowley could have lost his _entire existence._

The only thing that has _stopped_ Aziraphale from - oh, _hells,_ from so many things, from all of those things he hides beneath his own divine light, from all the things he’s never so much as thought in Crowley’s direction - the _only_ thing he takes just as seriously as his own angelic responsibilities has been _Crowley’s life._

This fact above all brings him up short and he turns to Crowley and says, urgently, needing, the way he’s said it every time before but with more rawness, “ _Crowley._ You can’t go down to hell if that’s their plan. You absolutely cannot. I forbid it.”

———

Crowley wants to laugh. He really does. But all his laughter has dried up and it’s just this ache, living in his throat and not letting anything out except for bitterness.

“Forbid it or not, angel, that’s what’s waiting for me.” He wants it to be casual but it’s casually _choked,_ and this is just the way this discussion’s going to go, then, all knots and dry ice. “You asssked.”

“Well, it’s quite obvious what’s going to happen to me,” Aziraphale shoots back, still prim in the face of everything. “So maybe I can, you know. Help you… escape. Or something.” His face clenches, like he’s in pain. “After I Fall.”

Crowley swallows and the sound echoes in the silence. He isn’t sure what to say, really. The Fall is the absolute worst thing he could possibly imagine could happen to an angel like Aziraphale. Crowley isn’t even sure, down in the sharp and barren core of himself, whether he’d prefer Aziraphale a demon or dead — well, that isn’t true, because he’s selfish and weak and he’d take Aziraphale any way he was allowed, but he isn’t really sure at all whether Aziraphale would allow _himself_ to exist as a demon. It happens, sometimes. Not all angels can survive it. Not all angels choose to.

“It’s all there is for me,” Aziraphale’s saying, looking down at his hands in his lap. “Gabriel’s probably ready to kick me out himself.”

“Gabriel’s an absolute arse,” Crowley hisses instinctively, but then something catches in his brain, in the echoes of memories he’s buried beneath so much grit and ash and soil. “Wait a second, just — wait.”

“Hmm?” It isn’t a particularly hopeful hum.

It comes to Crowley, then, in flashes around the long dull pain of trauma. “Gabriel can’t. They’ll have to appeal to the Almighty.”

“Oh?” Aziraphale’s eyes on him are heavy with curiosity and pity and Crowley hates it. “I don’t think that’ll be… necessary.”

“Ah, but it is.” Crowley stretches his legs out in front of him. He’s all angles and edges, too sharp for anything these days. “Either an angel chooses to Fall, you know, makes the leap, does the _deed,_ or — or they’re, well tossed. By Her. Gabriel doesn’t have the power to do it himself.” Something else is buzzing in his head, some tiny scrap of something unfolding itself in his direction and flapping to get his attention.

“He absolutely would,” Aziraphale argues. “Or Michael, at least.” He sighs. “And it’s sort of pointless to argue about it, isn’t it? I can’t decide whether it’s better or worse to know that The Lord Herself will be the one to…” Aziraphale swallows. “If it’s Her will. If it’s. Yes.”

This is not a good voice: it’s all fractured and split, already shaking into dozens of pieces, shattered in patterns like stained glass all over the floor, like the shadows of a church. Crowley wants to move forward, wants to pull Aziraphale into an embrace and promise none of it will happen. Instead, he focuses on the small thing in his head trying to catch his thoughts.

“No, Aziraphale,” he breathes, slowly, as it coalesces from mist into a concrete thought: a single one, one sentence, one thread up against a maelstrom. “They won’t.”

“They most certainly _will,_ ” Aziraphale says petulantly, and it’s so close to the stroppy sulk he usually sinks into that Crowley’s heart pangs with familiarity, with the desire to box all of this up and ship it out somewhere they’ll never be found.

“Think about it,” Crowley’s saying almost without thinking; his brain’s still playing this single thought through every language he knows, trying to calculate it down to its components, trying to look at it in a way that will help. “After today, do you think Gabriel really has the balls to approach - Her? - and request something like this? He’s gonna stay as far away from the Almighty as he fucking can. _He’s too afraid he was wrong._ ”

Aziraphale slowly turns his head to meet Crowley’s eyes. He feels something catch, inside the angel: something that lights like a cigarette, like a candle, the very beginnings of a blaze that could, if fed, grow to consume an entire history. “Do you think so?”

“Oh, angel,” Crowley says, and there’s too much kindness in his voice for a moment like this: far too much love, far too many things he’s never meant to let out of their cages. “Gabriel’s a power-hungry arse who’s not even fit to — to look at you.” His voice wrings all the feelings out into the open like a sponge. “He won’t _dare.”_

Aziraphale looks up at him suddenly, sharp, as if he’s picked up on something in the background of Crowley’s voice.

Crowley swallows it back, refocuses all of his randomly-flowing emotions on Aziraphale. “Besides, if you Fall, then he’s just going to have to deal with you again and again until you finally smite him. Be worth charging admission for that one, but I don’t think that absolute wanker’s gonna give you the chance.”

“Well,” Aziraphale says, reluctant, “I guess in the end we ought to ...ignore that case.” Crowley looks up at him sharply and Aziraphale corrects: “If it happens there’s nothing we can do, I mean. I certainly can’t fight… Her.” Crowley’s fairly sure he isn’t supposed to pick up on the shudder, but he does, watching Aziraphale’s face go carefully blank as if he’s anything near composed.

“Right,” Crowley says. Then he takes a breath. “What do they do with angels who won’t Fall?”

———

Aziraphale’s in the kitchen, refilling the charcuterie plate. It’s a very obvious stalling technique, but he doesn’t really care. There’s something so tactile in this act: the balance of the knife, the sharpness of the edge, slicing through the rich prepared meatstuffs - all of it made, constructed, assembled, _tasted_ by humans - the careful slicing, to make the thinnest piece, translucent like tissue paper, easily wrinkled and folded into itself, layers of texture and flavor.

It shouldn’t be surprising that one of Aziraphale’s favorite things about this earth is the food. There’s just so much to be _had._ It’s one of the most brilliant things humans have ever done: dishes that can be made in a million infinite different ways, never the same — unless the goal is to repeat the same, at which point they become so clever, so specific, dedicated to counting out the flakes of basil. These are the details of this world that Aziraphale loves; these are the things that are worth saving.

He knows Crowley is watching him. There’s something building up between the two of them: some sort of congruence, a flash point where the things they’ve buried and haven’t said are going to volatilize, suddenly expand from their condensed forms into a vapor pressure they won’t be able to ignore. Aziraphale isn’t sure whether this is the time for it. He’s so, so, so worried about Crowley. He’s _always_ been worried about Crowley.

It’s the first thing, the book on the top of the stack, if someone was to peel away all the things Aziraphale has used to bury this vivisection of his heart: the very first thing. The first - not sin, really, nor is it a step downwards, because Aziraphale will believe until the true end of his days that actions taken in love are still actions sanctioned by God - the very first declaration in the Thesis of the Principality Aziraphale, one day to be nailed to the door of someone’s gate, only that he doesn’t know who or how and he never wants them to see the light — he’s rambling.

The very first thing he’s always been concerned about has been Crowley’s safety. He’s an angel; it isn’t that he’s eager to Fall, or that he at all wants it, but he knows even afterwards there’s an existence that maybe isn’t absolutely joyful (based on centuries of watching Crowley) nor explicitly comfortable (again, from observation) but is in fact survivable under specific circumstances. It’s Crowley’s condition that has always plagued Aziraphale: a demon has nowhere else to fall.

For centuries, for millennia, from the very moment he extended a wing over Crowley’s head to protect him from the rain, Aziraphale has feared for his friend. He knows Hell doesn’t serve professionally scathing letters. He knows what Crowley would face if anyone in Hell were to find out — and oh, there are so many things they could find out: not just the Arrangement, not _just_ a rough alliance with an angel, not _just_ the performance of miracles on a timeline that benefitted both of them, that’s all horrible enough in the minds of his managers, but:

—it’s Crowley, at his core, Crowley who loves humanity, who only wants to play silly pranks on them, who wants to push them in ways that seem evil but often just make them better; Crowley, who loves this planet, all its luscious greenery, its fertile soil, the things that can be set into it. It was Crowley who picked London for both of them, who saw an image in the bones of roads and the filaments of buildings, who saw something that would become lovely and filthy and broad and buzzing and the absolute epitome of mankind. It’s that part of Crowley, the part Heaven would call _soft_ and Hell would call _weak_ ; that’s the vital piece Aziraphale has always feared anyone else would see.

Because to him it’s always been as obvious as a beacon, a lighthouse. Crowley is not _bad._ He’s chaotic, and he’s mischievous, and he will eternally end up on the side asking all of the dangerous questions, but … well. Aziraphale could no more let Hell see this side of Crowley than he would bare his own feelings at Gabriel, and Uriel, and the rest of them.

All of this is a very long diatribe inside his head, and Crowley is still looking, and watching, and _seeing._ Aziraphale has put down the soppressata and moved on to gouda. He sets his knife down because he knows Crowley owns one of those cheese slicing contraptions with the taut wire on an arm. A tiny cheese guillotine. Heavens, but his thoughts are everywhere tonight.

“Angel,” Crowley says. It’s a growl and a plea all in one. Aziraphale wonders whether Crowley means to be so honest tonight, or if some of his normal barriers and games have been abandoned to save his energy. He must be exhausted. “Aziraphale. What do they do to angels that don’t Fall?”

Aziraphale knows the answer. He’s heard the rumors; he’s seen it happen, once, maybe two thousand years ago, an angel who’d rather be destroyed than fall.

“Hellfire,” Aziraphale says. It sticks in his throat and he swallows, tasting the aftermath of dry red wine, the flavors of black pepper and dark currants, the bitter tannins and the bruised fruits. It also tastes like a desert: drowned in sand. “I don’t know how they obtain it, but it’s Hellfire.”

Crowley, to his surprise, starts to laugh. Aziraphale has heard Crowley laugh so many times over the years. His true laugh is one that has to be startled out of him, and Aziraphale has treasured every time it’s happened, like a collector of fine things. This is a laugh that’s so dark he isn’t quite sure what to do with it.

“Fitting, then, huh? It’s like we made a mutual suicide pact, except they’re the ones acting it out.”

“For - for _heaven’s sake,_ Crowley,” Aziraphale cries, these words tearing out of his heart and through the thickness in his throat with an urgency he can’t really argue with. “This isn’t a _joke._ ”

“ _I can either joke or ssscream,”_ Crowley hisses at him, and Aziraphale realizes that they’re both here at this point, at the end of all things, at the edge of the garden, at the event horizon.

“Right,” Aziraphale says, and he’s proud his voice isn’t wavering any more than it normally might. “Well, here are reinforcements—” he lifts the plate of snacks; “—and there’s some more wine, oh look, perhaps that can help.”

———

Crowley isn’t _stupid._

He can be deliberately obtuse, okay, he’s a master at only seeing and dealing with the things he wants to; he can be secretive, protective, hiding his own shit behind the walls and in the crevices only he can find. He’s very, very good at ignoring blazingly obvious things if the situation depends on it, and to be perfectly honest, he really, basically, invented the act of hiding one’s genuine feelings behind a nice mask of detached vague amusement: sunglasses but for the soul.

“Angel,” he starts. He isn’t really sure how to say it - how to ask it - and there’s a weight to the air that he kind of hates on default because it’s melting through the usual barriers he throws up over his own fucking thoughts. “Look, Aziraphale, let’s be honest. Do you think there’s a way out of this?”

Aziraphale _absolutely_ jumps. His entire body turns to face Crowley on the couch, and Crowley’s reminded that he saw a match struck behind Aziraphale’s eyes just minutes ago. His brow is set, his lips pursed, and his eyes are looking at Crowley with — _hell,_ that’s too much, that’s too big for Crowley to take in right now, so he goes back to the rest of Aziraphale. His angel’s shoulders are set as if he’s already wielding a flaming sword he gave away and has no right to.

“ _Crowley,_ ” Aziraphale snaps, and it’s as harsh as anything Aziraphale has said over the years: Aziraphale pointing out, a number of times approaching infinity, that they are an angel and a demon: completely separate, incompatible, immiscible, not just oil and water but oil and air, fire and water, acid and metal. It’s too harsh. “Crowley, I absolutely do and I absolutely have to. This,” and he brandishes the small scrap of paper high, up near Crowley’s face. It smells like char and the bookshop. “We have to trust this,” Aziraphale says, and his voice is _wet_ with something now. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Alright,” Crowley drawls, and let it be casual: let it be normal, let it be in the standard key, let it be within the parameters. “What’s your endgame, then? What’s your win scenario?”

Aziraphale boggles at him as if he’s speaking — Atlantan, Norse, Nahtual, French: some combination of languages that do not and should not exist. Aziraphale looks at him as if rocks have come tumbling from his lips instead of words. It’s as if Crowley’s mouth is full of marbles, of cotton, of briny seawater; as if it’s full of molasses, of thread, of bones. “Do you really,” the angel begins, pulling himself up to his full height. “Do you _really_ need to ask me that, Crowley? At this - at this juncture?”

And Crowley’s heart cringes like a puppy, wilts like lettuce, bends like bamboo. “I guess not,” he says, defeat lying iron-like across his tongue. “The only chance you’ll have is to blame it on me,” he offers, “so you may as well start practicing now.”

He isn’t—

Crowley is not at all prepared for the blinding sense of righteous anger that suddenly _shoots_ from Aziraphale, echoing like ripples in a pond but far darker, the sense of a weight at the bottom of that lake pulling downward into something too thick to breathe. Aziraphale’s wings manifest with a _snap_ that _echoes_ through the organic walls of his apartment and it sounds like the stones of Eden, it sounds like the nails into the Cross, it sounds like a wall where an angel once stood. Aziraphale’s wings are so bright, a white licked with iridescent pinks and blues and gold, all along the edges. Crowley was not expecting this. He knows Aziraphale is more powerful than he chooses to practice, but somehow, he’s forgotten the absolute strength that’s manifested in a Principality.

Then again, he’s never actually had it directed at his face.

After six thousand and some years of knowing Aziraphale, of facing off against him in the continually shifting landscape that is humanity, Aziraphale has never fully manifested; he’s never fully unwound his form, never threatened Crowley with true angelic wrath. This form is a crude, mere, diluted portion of what Aziraphale can bring to this argument. It’s still a little fucking terrifying.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says, and it’s all ice on his tongue and fire down that particular nerve that runs the spine all the way through the lower back and into the thighs. How the fuck does he _do that?_ “Explain.”

And this is the way Crowley cracks.

It’s like dropping a glass on the floor. It isn’t just the act of shattering that clear, sharp, amorphous outline - it isn’t just watching the glass crystallize as it bursts into shards, as it splinters in known predictable patterns across its face, spiraling in fractals predicted by minute laws. He doesn’t _want_ to break. The problem with a dropped glass isn’t only the shards, lying around ready to slice into unexpected surfaces — the problem is also the liquid, contained, kept back, held in a cut container meant only for one.

“Why the hell - heaven - _anything_ \- are you telling me to blame you?” Aziraphale’s eyes are fire now. Crowley remembers that blue, pale blue, that silky blue: that’s the hottest part of the flame. When did he stand up?

The liquid, having been kept tight under pressure in the more careful of vessels, having been stored beyond all prying eyes in a tartan thermos -- spills.

“Because it’s the only way you’ll get back to Heaven, you idiot!” Crowley has leapt to his feet before he’s even processed the thought to do so. His fists are clenched, and he’s aware of his sunglasses sitting far - so far - across the room, now, when he’s never wanted them more. He wants to let his own demonic form sprawl free, but even he knows that’s just the knee-jerk reaction; even he knows that Aziraphale’s power could swallow his whole; even he knows he’d serve it up to Aziraphale by the mouthful and thank him as it vanished.

“ _Back_ to Heaven?” Aziraphale sputters, and for a moment loses more control than Crowley thinks he means to, a number of eyes flashing into - blinding - brilliance across his brow like a crown.

“Yes!” Crowley yells at him, and it’s a relief to do this now, to _let this out_ \- the liquid, splashing out of its confines, has found that it’s well past its boiling point - because apparently this is his last chance to get it through to Aziraphale and, well, Crowley’s proven that he’ll go down eventually, but he’ll at least go down bitching and screaming about it.

“ _I don’t think my ssside would like that,_ ” he hisses at Aziraphale, ticking off a finger. “ _I’m an angel, you’re a demon._ Go ahead, _angel,_ they’ve seen you now, out there, nearly holding hands with a demon himself!, your only chance is to just tell them it’s my fault!”

Because it was, Crowley thinks. Because it has been: eleven years ago he asked this angel, his most precious thing, to help him save a world; and if he hadn’t, Aziraphale would be safe, and hale, and whole, and ...not here.

His hands are clenched so hard, his shoulders are up, and it’s a shock so palpable that he _staggers_ when Aziraphale drops all of it, the glamour and the anger and the force of it, and then Aziraphale’s sitting in the corner of the couch, curled in on himself, and Crowley feels his stomach drop with the thought that he’s somehow frightened the angel with his yelling.

But no; Aziraphale turns to him, one hand gripped in his own hair, one reaching out to Crowley, and the look on his angel’s face is quite easily the worst thing he’s seen in centuries, and he’d literally seen Satan just hours before, so he can make a pretty good comparison. Crowley feels all blocked up, frozen, like his elbows and ankles have all intermingled and replaced each other; he moves, but jerky, and it stops long before he wants it to.

“Crowley.” It’s as if Aziraphale has never said his name before. He certainly hasn’t ever said it in this light: there have been a hundred thousand other pronunciations, with hints of exasperation and fondness and anger and frustration and pettiness and condescension and arrogance and happiness and oh, _Hell,_ but his name has never tasted this flavor on Aziraphale’s tongue, this sweetness that’s part disbelief, part _belief,_ and some part of a long low aching tenderness — or is Crowley just reading into this too much?

He remains standing, trying to tuck his hands - into his pockets - onto his hips - into his hair - arms crossed, but nothing feels right.

“For a thousand years,” Crowley begins, and then: “for _six_ thousand years, angel, you’ve done nothing but set that barrier between us.” His voice cracks, but at this point, the damage is done: the vessel has broken, the wine has spilt, and there’s no water left to drink from this dry place. “You can, at least, stop pretending about it. Here at the — at the end. Be honest with me, if nothing else. You’ve gone a bit far, maybe, but Heaven — but you can blame it on me, it’s your best chance.” He swallows, dry: “I want you to.” He’ll do this last thing right by his angel, his best friend, his— his partner. If he’s gonna go out, he’ll at least take all of Aziraphale’s blame with him.

He’s watching Aziraphale’s face so closely he can’t breathe with it and that’s the only way he sees it, the flow of feelings like a river, like a rainbow, until it ends with Aziraphale open-mouthed and gaping, then standing like he doesn’t know what limbs are anymore, and then — he’s crying, Aziraphale, the single tear that rolls down his cheek cutting through Crowley more sharply than any diamond every could.

“Don’t,” Crowley says, dry and _stupid_ with it: everything’s run out, every single bit of blood and ichor he had, and all he feels is bruised, bone-bruised, soul-bruised, flayed open with an angel’s tear. God, even in death he’s a melodramatic poet. It figures.

———

Aziraphale feels like he’s _bleeding._

This corporation has had injuries before, certainly. Even his angelic form has scars from the first War, wounds rent and wrenched through aetherspace and soul. This particular — well, no, this _particular_ corporation has only existed for hours, certainly, but his corporation before has been through a nearly criminal number of stabbings, bruisings, bleedings, building collapses (he’d been trying to save the books), mob fights (again, the books), tavern brawls (that, in fact, had mostly been over someone else’s honor), a number of natural disasters (books _and_ honor, most of those times), and an actual broken bone that he’d howled about for days before he’d begged Crowley to just put him out of his misery. Crowley had, of course — by healing the bone, and guaranteeing Aziraphale he’d never pass up the chance to make fun of him for it.

The point being, he’s dealt with all kinds of earthly pains before - some of them he’s even _chosen_ to deal with, to better understand the realm of human suffering - but this just feels like all of the fundamental pieces inside that make him _Aziraphale_ are slowly bleeding out, a dark, slow trickle through a tiny pinhole he’d never noticed or acknowledged was there—

—no, he had. Aziraphale’s come too far to lie to himself. But still:

“ _Crowley,”_ he says again, and he feels like this is what humans mean when they talk about heartbreak. He’s broken, shattered, devastated: he’s porcelain ground back to sand, pottery become dirt. But he isn’t fixing this, and neither is his anger and his upset, so he swallows a dry throat and croaks out, “What makes you say—”

Except he doesn’t have to finish the question, because he can hear Crowley asking him on the bus, in that even-bodied voice - Crowley is never even; he’s odds and angles, he’s tatters and scraps, a mobile of pieces that go but don’t match - and Aziraphale realizes that no, he doesn’t have to ask it at all to know what has made Crowley say these things.

Aziraphale lifts his head to say something, but somehow the understanding of this - his last hurt; his last act as an Angel of the Lord, before surely, after whatever punishment they have in store for him, he won’t be that anymore - has robbed him of everything, and he crumples off of the couch and onto the floor, onto his knees, hearing the _thud_ of a faraway noise like it has to travel through centuries to reach his ears. He looks up at Crowley, and suddenly realizes _just_ how far away he is.

Yes. Yes, yes — it’s been pretending, it’s been playing, it’s been the distinct and explicit setting of a barrier: as particular as bones to bones, as nerves to muscle, as steel to flesh. It’s been Aziraphale, yes, lying and fooling and dancing, performing, kicking up clouds of dust and playing the absolute mummer and throwing distractions and learning _magic tricks,_ the absolute _fool_ that he was, and he’s been doing all of this for so long and so _carefully,_ building up the wall that he needed to hide: well.

It seems he’s deceived himself. It seems he’s deceived his own heart as well, because if there’s anything in this entire universe of existence that can hurt more than Crowley’s face in this moment, the Almighty is welcome to bring it to bear on Aziraphale, with thanks.

He tries to say Crowley’s name a third time, but he can’t: dry wind against dust, his throat against the sand, a riverbed run dead with platitudes. He tries, and then Crowley falls to _his_ knees, and _that_ sound echoes all the way up Aziraphale’s spine notch by notch, vertebrae by vertebrae, so that by the time it reaches his ears everything has rushed past him and brought him back to this aegis, to this scene, to this — to his Crowley.

“Angel,” Crowley says, and how does it sound like a sob? Why is his demon crying, here, in this pocket of silence at the end? “Hey, _hey,_ Aziraphale, I’m sorry I yelled, I’m not — I’m not mad, really, I’m not, I just want. I just want.” The demon pulls in a shuddering breath and his hands are half-lifted between them and Aziraphale grasps at his fingertips with sudden desperate ferocity.

“You want what?”

“What you want,” Crowley says, honestly, obviously, openly, and the words slice through the remainder of Aziraphale’s being to leave a gaping cavern underneath. His hands spasm beneath the angel’s and Aziraphale has a brief moment to realize that this, this: is finally what his demon looks like when scared.

“My dear boy,” Aziraphale tries to say, but his throat is still caught with centuries of denial, thick with all of the things he convinced himself he didn’t have to say - the things he thought went better off unsaid - except that now when faced with the absolute mountain range of them, the thick volume of this river’s flow, he feels like letting go and tangling himself in the utter weeds of his own cowardice. It comes out a rasping noise, an almost-squeak, and Crowley takes it for encouragement.

“It’s all I’ve ever wanted, angel,” Crowley says. His head bows over Aziraphale’s hands, which are clutching desperately at Crowley’s fingers, palms, wrists - there has never been a hand held like this in the history of hands; there has never been a grip between two people so fraught with delicacy, so detailed with six thousand and some years of memory - and Aziraphale grips even harder and clumsier at the act of Crowley nearly giving prayer. His demon is scared. His demon is at the end of his strength.

“Tell me what you want,” Crowley says, and his eyes remain on their hands: Aziraphale’s suntanned fingers grasping grossly around Crowley’s long, slender, pale fingers, knuckles brushed with a faint kiss of red hair; the backs of his hands alight with veins and freckles. Crowley’s hands are beautiful; how has he never seen so?

“Tell me what you want, and I’ll make it happen.” Crowley’s voice is so urgent that it breaks Aziraphale from his reverie, his devoted regard to Crowley’s nail-beds and the turn of his knuckles and the way his wristbones protrude for attention in this long, lanky corporation of his. Aziraphale is having trouble focusing. He feels like whatever has acted as his heart - his soul? - in this corporation for all of its long, long years is slowly tearing itself into pieces, an act begun by clumsy fingers such that he can feel every fraction of the rip, clawing its way through his heart like the Grand Canyon, working so slowly and irrevocably at the mountains of the Americas that they are and will be forever changed.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says - finally, it chokes out, and all he’s been able to say is Crowley’s _name:_ his chosen name, not his assigned one, not his human title, but the name this demon took and wound into himself so tightly that every syllable of it makes Aziraphale long for something unwritten.

———

It shouldn’t be so surprising, this.

It really isn’t. Crowley’s in the kitchen, refilling glasses, as Aziraphale continues to kneel on the floor and look into his own hands as if the true Revelations shall be written on his own palms. Crowley doesn’t want it to be a big deal. It’s just another moment in their existence, really: a moment where he continues to establish his orbit entirely within his Principality’s existence. There have been millions; there could have been millions more, except that they’ve done it now, here: the end of all their things.

Crowley stalks back into the room, sets the glasses down, kneels down to reach for Aziraphale. “C’mon, angel,” he murmurs, hands grasping - carefully; so carefully - at elbow and shoulder, gesturing upwards, and yet—

—within a moment Aziraphale has clutched at his hands and Crowley’s stuck, on one knee, in front of Aziraphale with all of his protections accidentally gouged out of his own two eyes, and the breath catches in Crowley’s throat.

And then catches again as Aziraphale’s hands move upwards, to clutch around Crowley’s neck, and then to cup his face.

“Dearest,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley figures this is the space where he starts to speak in tongues from the stress. It isn’t the first time Aziraphale has done so, and Crowley gathers himself together. He may as well be proud that his last long hours on this earth were spent caring for his angel the same way he’d done for millenia past.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispers; “Dearest Crowley,” and all of Crowley - each part demonic and dark, every atom making up this curse in the body of a being, this stain of a corporation, this fallen pathetic fool pretending to be himself - freezes solid.

He cannot move. There’s something Aziraphale is doing that has stopped all of his pieces: his electrons and protons have paused to listen; his nerves and muscles and bones have, always, been tuned towards the frequency of Aziraphale.

“I haven’t,” says Aziraphale, “I know I didn’t.” These phrases fall from his lips and Crowley snatches them up internally, turning them over like they’re pieces of a puzzle he needs to solve before he can save his angel from their projected fates. “There’s no reason,” the angel says, and why do all of Crowley’s assorted and broken pieces, these fallen manuscripts, these burnt drafts: why do they all feel like crying?

“I’ve given you nothing to hope for,” Aziraphale whispers. Are these even still words? Crowley isn’t sure he’s breathing; isn’t sure his ears are still accepting wavelengths at human limitations. “Nothing to go on. In fact, I’ve stopped you, time and time again.”

The words feel like they’re ebbing slowly around some far-off boundary of Crowley’s consciousness; as if he’s cut into his human hand with a knife, and there will be quite a bit of human pain throbbing and blaring into his head in a second, but for right now he’s detachedly watching the broken flesh, watching the blood swell up and pool and run over, knowing the hurt will hit any second but strangely ensconced from it, as if wrapped up in cotton and copper.

But Aziraphale’s fingers spasm around his face, where they’ve cupped at his jawbone, and Crowley is suddenly and viciously reminded of pain. He hisses, although he keeps it low, because he’s still watching Aziraphale’s face move through eons and it’s _disturbing_ and he doesn’t know what to _do._

“There isn’t a world where I’d leave you here, anymore,” Aziraphale pronounces, finally, and it rings with bronze and gold and pearl like a real proclamation from a Principality: like an announcement from On High, like the songs the archangels sang, _Gloria, Gloria, Hallelujah,_ except that it’s too much and it’s splitting Crowley’s skull with it — until Aziraphale’s cool fingers come to stroke at his cheeks, thumbs along his lips, hands gathering in his hair and bringing his forehead to the angel’s breast. Crowley is motionless; he is unable to move.

“You’re my side now, for better or worse,” Aziraphale murmurs into Crowley’s hair, and the words cut like knives, like fingernails, letting something dark and seeping out into the light. “And I’m yours, if you’ll still have me. There’s no returning for either of us.”

To be fair, to be honest, it does take a long, long moment, drawn out like honey-molasses dripping from a spoon into a kettle: the gathering, the viscous collection, the point where the surface tension and the pull of gravity meet, match, overlap. The way a droplet forms and then skitters as it splashes, tenderly, into boiling water - into hot oil - into burning sulphur. It feels like it takes centuries until Crowley’s backbrain rouses itself back up into the ether of his existence to process this single gift: until his snaketongue flicks out to taste this single drop of ambrosia.

“I’ve never held you,” Aziraphale says, hushed, his hands paused in Crowley’s hair like fingers on harp-strings. He sounds, of all things, bemused. “Six thousand years and I’ve never even held you properly. Come _here_ , darling.”

The last is delivered like the proclamation of a Principality so used to being listened to that disobedience isn’t even a word that exists in their proximity. Crowley, broken and now caught completely off-guard, and unable to deny his angel anything here at the last, remains absolutely still — like a snake about to strike, except that he’s already been struck and bleeding.

Aziraphale takes his silent stillness as tacit invitation and moves, slowly, projecting every motion with his entire body as if he’s trying to keep Crowley gentle - the snaketamer, with some experience - he pulls Crowley up and in with one broad palm at the back of Crowley’s skull and the other holding firmly round the small of his back. Aziraphale tucks Crowley about him like a blanket: neatly, firmly, as if he’s a treasure and a familiar thing all at once. Crowley’s brain is trying to start itself again: it’s like he’s in the wrong gear, and he can’t get any sort of grip on the road, no chance at acceleration. He sinks into Aziraphale’s body like he can’t help it - he, quite possibly, truly cannot - and the angel’s wings curl around them like nice neat parenthesis.

“I’m sorry you don’t know this,” Aziraphale tells him, with his voice tight as nails and dark as rain. “But I didn’t even know it myself, dear boy, not until we were there and everything else just — happened. I am _not_ going back to Heaven.” Crowley can feel Aziraphale swallow; he can hear it in his inner ear, and he turns the tiniest bit to just tuck the smallest piece of his face further into Aziraphale’s neck, because he’s too close not to. He really can’t help it. Flower turns to sun; tides answer to the moon, and Crowley responds to Aziraphale.

“I’m not going back,” Aziraphale repeats, and this time it’s tucked into Crowley’s hair: said into the space behind his ear, into iron-rust locks, into the scalp of Crowley’s head as if to travel directly into his soul without passing go. “There’s nothing for me there, and everything I love is here.”

Crowley opens his mouth: tries to make words, even with his tied-up snaketongue, with his scrambled senses still echoing Aziraphale’s speech as if he might be able to translate it into something that makes sense, something other than the words his human-ears have just heard: so weak, to hear what he wants to hear. So tender; so susceptible, too much tuned to his own heart rather than the waves of air that carry words from body to body. He can’t get out much more than a noise that comes entirely from the back of his throat. His entire body sinks down further into Aziraphale’s: his face is buried against the junction of neck and shoulder, his arms around waist; his knees existing somewhere that might not even be this particular plane. Crowley might be drowning. He isn’t sure he cares.

———

Aziraphale stays where he is for what feels like a century. To them, a century is a blink: and yet he thinks both Heaven and Hell will move in human-time for this; they’ll engage the fastest timeline available for them, and all of the wrath will hit within the next day. Still, even knowing that, the Principality Aziraphale will move right now for no-one but Crowley: the Metatron Himself could descend speaking words of ancient tongues and Aziraphale would stand here, on his knees, cupping Crowley’s head and back like a protective field, weaving magnitude and frequency into the air and digging into the ground beneath Crowley’s flat as only a Principality can in times of need.

It occurs to him, vaguely, despite what Crowley said earlier, that he could in fact Fall for this: and the Principality Aziraphale only gathers the demon Crowley closer and growls into the nape of his neck as if he’s setting up boundary wire.

Eventually he can tell: Crowley has been shaking - not on this plane, his human corporation is much better trained than that - but on some plane of existence, that tentative one they share between the two of them where the crossover is neither angelic nor demonic, simply existent. But the shaking finally subsides, and he can feel Crowley’s physical body sinking further into his own, and Aziraphale feels tears prick at his eyes at the number of things he would do to keep this messy, ragged, naughty, beloved set of human bones and nerves alive.

Eventually - decades later, centuries later, entire realms of existence later - Crowley can pull away from him. Aziraphale guides him upright, leaves his hands in helpful places: supporting a forearm; against the planes of his chest; one on his face, tracing the line of his jawbone; squeezing his hands. Aziraphale feels like he’s simultaneously alive, alerting, on too many axes of existence: and yet it’s easy to gather the many planes of Crowley into one, to grasp with hands and let him solidify into this, this longitude and latitude and amplitude that have been their own particular notes since the day this planet first sang.

“Crowley,” he says, because he needs to be sure his words are being said through his human-throat, coming from his human-lungs, audible sounds from his own corporation to his demon’s. “I’m sorry. We were agreeing with each other over two completely different things. I’m not even considering Heaven as an option. My darling, I thought it was obvious.”

Crowley gives him this look - long, long look, as if he’s been drowned in the rain; his hair is mussed and drooping and even his eyelids look heavy - but then all he says is, after a long and particularly audible breath: “Angel.”

“Ask me again,” Aziraphale tells him. They’re kneeling across from each other now, knees brushing against each other, and their hands very loosely clasped between them in a gesture that isn’t so much a holding as an act to stay in contact. “Ask me again.”

Crowley’s throat works. It’s a swallow to end all swallows; the sound echoes through nearly every ethereal channel Aziraphale is listening to - and that’s a lot at this moment - and it’s a sound of dire inevitability, of hopeless fate, of nothing that isn’t ineffable.

“What’s your win scenario, angel,” Crowley asks, and it’s only a little bit hoarse. Bless him. Six thousand years of earthly history up against him, and all his memories as an angel before, the armies of Heaven and Hell looking down his throat, and he only sounds like he’s swallowed a bit of mead wrong. “Tell me.”

“Victory,” Aziraphale states, and it sounds in the back of his own throat like a trumpet. “That’s you and I, dining at the Ritz. It’s… it isn’t discorporation. It isn’t a war. It’s…” He barely wants to say it, for fear the word will hurt Crowley, but he must: “It’s _grace._ A grace period.” He swallows. “For us.”

Crowley starts laughing. It hurts, initially: it isn’t a kind laughter, nor is it a friendly one; this is Crowley’s cynical view, his normal _glass-half-empty_ take on the world, his distrust in every single system he’s ever worked for. (It’s true: Aziraphale dreams, sometimes, of a star-world given over to Crowley’s governance, and the amazing things that might come of it; he always wakes sweating and slightly exhausted and more than slightly exhilarated.) And then it’s just Crowley, laughing at ineffability, because he can and he always will: the angel who skipped the elevator, yet still took the stairs.

Finally, Crowley sits up. He looks Aziraphale in the eye. His pupils are golden, honey, saffron; the bronze of a coin; the yellow of a goldfinch; a daffodil in bloom, yellow with its orange center, aimed only at the sky.

“Angel,” he says, and then: “Aziraphale.”

“So,” Aziraphale starts, looking at Crowley and feeling like every single ounce of longing he owns is written in his own pupils, scrawled across his eyelids. “Tell me the story, Crowley. Tell me the story where we both survive this.” _I’ll tell you epics after,_ he thinks, his angelic grace still pushing at his edges as if he still isn’t-quite-human; as if his heart hasn’t yet solidified in this new-but-old corporation. He lets go of Crowley’s palms but it’s only to slide his hands up Crowley’s arms to rest on his shoulders.

“I won’t say I’ll never talk to you again,” he breathes, “but you know I won’t if I can’t. Tell me the fairy-tale, and I’ll work from there.”

———

They’re both back in the kitchen. It’s funny: out of all the places in Crowley’s flat, this is one he hasn’t spent much time in; his wine cellar feeds down from a linen closet in the hallway and his liquor cabinet is on shelves behind the mosaic he kept from Greece, and he truly doesn’t eat often. But now that Aziraphale is here - here, and needy, and wanting to be grounded to this earth by every single molecule he can find - Crowley finds his own refrigerator blossoming Camembert and dates and almonds and, once, a bowl of fresh edamame still steaming that Aziraphale took immediately to cup in his palms like comfort. He still isn’t sure whether it’s his miracle or the angel’s, and at this point, he doesn’t care. They’re both spending miracles like gambling money, tonight, as if there’s a chance: maybe if they lay down all their money on the right hand, they’ll win.

Crowley can tell his entire spine has been torn off its normal axis, but: but. He cannot think about that. He will not think about that. He needs to devote his entire brain to telling Aziraphale a story, and then they can both focus their considerable minds to the simplest way to make it come true.

“Once there was an angel and a demon,” he says, over a glass of simple Woodford Reserve; Aziraphale was drinking a Pinot, but it seems to have become a Bordeaux within the last five minutes, based on the aroma. Crowley needs human liquor now; it trickles into these human taste-buds, slicks along these human nerves and reflexes until the rest of him is humming away under its influence and he gets enough control over his own cells to direct them in the certain way he wants.

“They thought they’d gotten in trouble,” he drawls into the surface of his bourbon. “And they came up with a plan to handle it, whenever their punishment arrived.”

He and Aziraphale have done thousands of these. It started off as an aimless little game, just as the Arrangement was slowly coalescing from ashes and sand into something tangible: _if you were to tempt, if I were to bless, how would it go? Tell me a story about this man, that woman, those angels. Tell me the fairy tale of a world where this goes on with no repercussions. Tell me they deserved it; tell me all the ways it could happen. Give me all of these pieces, and I will build you a castle._

“What were their punishments?” Aziraphale’s pushing a piece of fresh, crusty baguette around in a shallow plate of olive oil with salt and freshly ground pepper. Crowley knows he doesn’t have pepper. This is just Aziraphale, passing love into his refrigerator the same way he does to everything around him.

Crowley’s not thinking about the deep, desperate gasp of relief that’s still building inside him: that hollow, spiraling echo that is Aziraphale not wanting to go back to Heaven. He isn’t acknowledging it at all. It’s something he’s going to tie up in butcher’s paper and ribbon and heavy iron manacles and throw into the ocean like he’s disposing of a dead body. He’ll deal with that later.

The bread looks — interesting. Crowley reaches out to the long thin loaf on the counter, snags the smallest piece in his fingers.

“The demon’s going to take a nice nasty shower in holy water and, well, explode, and the angel’s going to get himself hit by Hellfire and, well, also explode.” It isn’t supposed to be funny, and Aziraphale looks at him reproachfully; Crowley just shrugs. As he said before, this is his only way of approaching it without the breakdown he’s now had, successfully, twice.

Aziraphale sighs. “It’s all so messy.” He’s really saying something else, but Crowley can’t listen on thirteen ethereal planes any more. He needs all of his mental acuity focused into this one. He wipes the bread through the olive oil, picking up a good deal of the salt, sets it on his tongue. It’s surprisingly tasty: the crisp freshness of the bread, the nutty taste of the oil, the brine and a hint of pepper. Pure: a combination that can present each of its elements individually and still be greater than the sum of each separately. He takes another piece of bread.

“It figures,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley pretends not to notice the way everything sounds in the back of Aziraphale’s mouth. “Here we are, facing certain doom, and I finally find something you’ll actually eat.”

Crowley laughs, because he’s supposed to. “Desperate times, angel,” he says, and in the next bite he can taste the sunshine that shone on the olives and the wheat. He swallows it.

“Go on,” says Aziraphale, and it sounds like he’s trying to hold something else back.

“Angel,” Crowley says instead. He turns, and - given what just happened - and he wants - he reaches out to rest his fingers on the back of Aziraphale’s hand, briefly. “If you really think there isn’t a way, then we’re going to get smashingly drunk and do the exploding bits here.” As the shock spreads across Aziraphale’s face, Crowley’s fingers spasm, and he adds, “I’d rather it be you than them.” It’s entirely too honest and he wants to swallow it immediately, back into the depths of his snakebelly.

“I don’t think I could,” Aziraphale whispers.

“Wouldn’t have to.” Crowley’s voice is softer than it should be; why is this comforting? “We can both make what we need and ...leave it. For the other.”

“We aren’t discussing that option.” Aziraphale brings himself up, setting his shoulders, and although it isn’t anywhere near the ringing force he’d thrown at Crowley earlier, he’s reminded of it. Another echo down the long serpentine joints of his spine, and Crowley stuffs it all back to the bottom of the ocean where it’s supposed to go.

“Shame,” he says, the very beginning of what might eventually become an idea starting to tease at the absolute edges of his mind. “We can both make what the other one’s going to… get. Hellfire wouldn’t harm _me._ Shame we can’t just… switch places.”

“That’s absolutely it,” Aziraphale says, and this rings like a copper gong, like the harsh blue of a clear sky in fall, like church bells at the back of his throat. “We switch places.”

“Ideally, sure.” Crowley snorts, dipping another piece of the baguette into the plate of oil. Aziraphale’s added cheese of some sort, probably parmesan. “They’ll know immediately, angel,” he adds, around the mouthful.

Aziraphale reaches into his pocket and pulls out Agnes Nutter’s final prophecy. He slowly smooths it out on the counter and then slides it over to Crowley.

“Choose your faces wisely,” he then reads, as if Crowley hasn’t memorized it already. “That’s how we do it — that’s how we survive.”

“Then how on earth do we switch?” Crowley swallows. His throat’s as dry as all the deserts in the world because he’s suddenly afraid: he can’t allow himself hope. “How do we switch in a way they won’t immediately catch onto?”

“The angel was — was taken to Heaven,” Aziraphale begins, haltingly. “He was given a trial, and… oh, hell,” he spat. “They won’t bother. Don’t want too much of Heaven to _question._ They sentenced him to Hellfire, but when it came time for it, the angel survived because…”

“Because it was really the demon,” Crowley adds. His voice is as hesitant as Aziraphale’s: remarkably shy. “It was really the demon, and so nothing burned up, because Hellfire’s like home to demons. And they didn’t realize it was a demon because…”

“Because they’d changed their shapes to look like one another?” Aziraphale offers it across the counter, stammers over it. They’re writing this tale on their own, just them, the two of them against the literal world.

“No,” Crowley says, but it’s brief: a choking noise. “No, to feel like—”

“They’d switched shapes,” Aziraphale breathes, and they really _are_ writing this together, and aloud; “They’d switched places to _feel_ like each other, not just look.”

Crowley looks up and into Aziraphale’s eyes. They’re blue, they’re grey, they’re intense with his pupils blown wide and eyebrows raised.

“They’d switched corporations,” they both say, into the following silence. Aziraphale’s is soft like a prayer; Crowley’s is broken and shattered, a murmur that never came into being, because all that hope he sank to the bottom of the river is bubbling up now, and it hurts like boiling.

———

Aziraphale hasn’t felt like this in nearly six thousand years.

In the beginning - the Garden, and the brief period he’d had before it, unmarked by human concepts like time - he’d been able to feel the glory of the Almighty singing its way up and down his spine like arpeggios, humming along the tip of each feather in all of his wings, and it had brought him this sense of — of surety, of belonging, of absolute _faith._ Then the Garden had come into being, and it had rather been more than seven days, but he’d felt that bone-white alignment within him stumble, hiccup, sway, and then he’d given his sword away to the First Man and he’d barely been able to hear Her.

He’d thought it a punishment until Gabriel had (unkindly) informed him that it was just the way things were on Her Earth, embodying one of Her corporations like he was; Uriel had sniffed, as if the entire thing was preposterous, and Aziraphale had gone back to his work with the faint sense of someone singing a song he’d once heard the words to. It wasn’t faith diminished; it was faith — delayed, maybe, postponed, although he’d never given up on the faith: he’d simply learnt to wait longer for a response.

But now the surety of all of this is blazing through his soul as if his own spine is a flaming sword: spreading from his own vertebrae out to make the shape of a cross down his arms and through the crown of his head, through the soles of his feet. He hasn’t felt faith like this since the first day he walked the wall above the Eastern Gate, and watched these new human creatures fumble their way through a number of miracles of just _existing_ ; he hasn’t felt this way, perhaps, ever, except for the single moment of clarity standing at an airbase in Tadfield and knowing, somehow, that Gabriel was wrong.

Just like he now knows this is right. He isn’t really sure what it means: if it’s the Almighty or Agnes Nutter or just stupid human ineffability. What he does know is this: Agnes, the planet’s one true Prophet, had seen this years before and predicted it. What he knows is that he and Crowley, Crowley and he, are the only two entities that would ever have any chance of crossing over each other like this; he knows that angel and demon don’t mix well, except for the fact that if you can look past all the wrappings and the icing and the label on the bottle, they come from the same stock. What he knows is that switching essences, switching corporations, switching selves with Crowley offers — no fear. No trepidation, save that which regards Crowley, who could still get caught in a stupid situation of Gabriel’s, but: no. Aziraphale has to trust: trust God, and trust Agnes, and trust Crowley himself to be able to come out of this alive.

What he knows is that he loves Crowley more than he’s loved anything in his existence, and that Crowley has held the other half of his soul for so many centuries that it won’t even be painful for them to slip over into each other’s existences. Just as he’s held most of what remains of Crowley’s heart, of his faith, of his demon’s ridiculous and undeserved loyalty. It will be enough.

“Angel,” Crowley starts; he’s standing in front of Aziraphale, and looks very uncharacteristically like he’s about to start stammering. Aziraphale is flooded with a rush of absolute fondness. “Angel, if this doesn’t work, I…”

“Have faith,” Aziraphale whispers, and he reaches up to cup Crowley’s beloved face in his hands, pulling him down until their foreheads touch. “In me, that is. In yourself. In _us_.”

This catches Crowley off guard, but no more than anything Aziraphale has said tonight, and he watches his demon swallow, carefully. Some day he’ll start fishing into that deep river - brave its currents and depths to pull back up the things Crowley’s burying - but right now all he needs, he has, here in his hands.

“Are you with me?” Aziraphale whispers, and Crowley’s goldenorb eyes come up to lock into his, and it feels like — flying.

“Always, angel,” says Crowley, and Aziraphale lets go.

———

_ In a world so dark _

_ I'm missing parts I gave away _

_ How many reasons do you need _

_ To stay with me? _

_ Keep the pain _

_ Be a human being _

_ Tell me _

_ What makes you, you? _

_ What makes me, me? _

_ Why's it so hard to be a human being? _

_ Who do you love? _

_ What do you breathe? _

_ Why's it so hard? _

_ How many reasons do you need _

_ To be a human being? _

_ Maybe I could be the only reason you need _

**Author's Note:**

> YEAH LOOK I KNOW THIS HAS BEEN DONE FOR SIX THOUSAND YEARS BUT YOU KNOW IT DIDN'T WORK OUT AS EASY AND AS HAPPY AS WE ALL WISH EVEN THOUGH I'VE READ THE SAME PORN YOU HAVE AND ENJOYED IT I HAD TO GRASP THIS DELICATE MOMENT IN MY FISTS AND THEN CRUMBLE IT A LITTLE BIT INTO A BINCHBONCH OF PIECES WHATS UP I STILL HAVE FEELINGS ABOUT THIS SHOW STOP LOOKING AT ME
> 
> it's part one of a triptych: before the swap, the swap, and after. it then has a bit of a chaptered thing that comes after. because not everything is easy and i just need to capture all of the infinite ways light can reflect off of these shards and i just 
> 
> look i am still writing the snakeverse and it will be there for your absolute crack needs let me have this bye
> 
> please comment I’m desperate like Crowley


End file.
